I feel like the article presumes a truth that is not really obvious to be a truth. Namely the "if you build, they will come" idea around Will they? While that makes logical sense if you were...
I feel like the article presumes a truth that is not really obvious to be a truth. Namely the "if you build, they will come" idea around
tackling entrenched problems of economic and racial inequality offers an alternative way to mobilize the American electorate, including the diverse, working-class populations that live in suburbs and metropolitan regions.
Will they? While that makes logical sense if you were looking down from above, it really has not played out in reality. Sanders tried, twice, and even among the demographics of working class Democrats he lost in both primaries. In fact, much of his voters came from affluent Suburbanites!
Brexit, for instance, was also overwhelmingly voted for by the areas that would be the most disproportionately hurt by the policy, and also disproportionately low income. It's not a US party dynamic specifically.
This also implies that the electorate has a much greater focus on economic policy than I think can be assumed either. Identity politics is a big part, and that's another thing the article seems pretty vague on. I'm not sure who the working class people being aliened are. If it's the new, diverse suburbia - I mean, look at the numbers, while it was notable Trump gained in Black votes, it's only interesting in an academic sense, it was still overwhelmingly democratic. Asians - looks likes it's all blue to me. Hispanics is the demographic that Democratics lost the most ground in, but I think just an economic policy that favors wealthy urbanites is too simplistic an answer to that, not to mention that part of the economic policy that turned hispanics in, say, the Rio Grande valley away was the COVID lockdowns.
If it's much of rural America, I am doubtful that economic policy is going to be a bigger motivator than identity politics, and Republicans have the white, conservative identity on lockdown - not to mention that it's not exactly an identity I think you should try and have as a party ethically.
Like, fundamentally, if a voter's biggest wants were a
working-class agenda that attacks economic inequality, systemic racism, and the global climate crisis by guaranteeing quality housing, health care, and employment; freedom from police brutality and the carceral system; and enacting a Green New Deal.
Is it not obvious which party, while flawed in execution, is closer to that!? If a voter looked at the Democrat's presidential platform, and looked at Trump, and the GOP's "platform", and then decided to either not vote or vote for Trump, then I am doubtful how much that is truly their main priority!
One other point is that the suburbs aren’t a bastion of whiteness anymore. Plenty of suburbs are themselves diverse, and while the Dems are moving away from pandering to white suburbanites, they...
One other point is that the suburbs aren’t a bastion of whiteness anymore. Plenty of suburbs are themselves diverse, and while the Dems are moving away from pandering to white suburbanites, they are still engaging with suburbanites as a whole.
The article makes a pretty clear case that the Democratic Party is failing many Americans by prioritizing the interests of suburbanites but I would have liked to hear a bit more discussion about...
The article makes a pretty clear case that the Democratic Party is failing many Americans by prioritizing the interests of suburbanites but I would have liked to hear a bit more discussion about the demographic constraints on that decision. Are there enough votes to support a more progressive Democratic Party or is their emollient behavior a necessary evil to gain power? (If there wasn’t another way to get Trump out of office, I’m more likely to be forgiving, in this instance.)
Part of this is a chicken or the egg issue. People who aren't represented by either party are less likely to vote, so their votes aren't there to be attractive to either party, which means no...
Part of this is a chicken or the egg issue. People who aren't represented by either party are less likely to vote, so their votes aren't there to be attractive to either party, which means no party will move to represent them... So at any given time you can argue that the parties should both focus on the people who already do vote since that's the path to immediate victory, but it doesn't lead to widespread enfranchisement.
The article points to progressive activists' mobilizing efforts that people like Stacy Abrams have carried out:
The article points to progressive activists' mobilizing efforts that people like Stacy Abrams have carried out:
The Democratic breakthrough in Georgia in the 2020 election offers a case in point. The Biden-Harris campaign won Georgia because the voter registration drives led by Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project helped to mobilize a multiracial electorate, regardless of where they lived. While some moderate white professionals and typically Republican suburbanites did vote for the Democratic presidential ticket, it is a profound mistake to equate the suburban counties north of Atlanta with the demographic category of the white college-educated professional vote.
Joe Biden won 56.3 percent of the vote in Cobb County and 58.4 percent in nearby Gwinnett County, both of which were overwhelmingly white and Republican strongholds as recently as a quarter-century ago. Today Cobb County is less than two-thirds white, and Lucy McBath, an African-American progressive activist, easily won reelection in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, which includes parts of Cobb and two other suburban counties. Gwinnett is now a majority-minority suburban county (30 percent African American, 22 percent Latino, 13 percent Asian), and in 2020 a progressive white Democrat, Carolyn Bourdeaux, flipped the Seventh Congressional District thanks in large part to the multiracial get-out-the-vote efforts of progressive organizations.
In Arizona, the Biden-Harris victory in the 2020 election also depended upon grassroots progressive organizations targeting a multiracial, increasingly working-class electorate in new battleground areas. Maricopa County once gave Ronald Reagan more than 70 percent of its vote and Trump carried it by a 3.5 percent margin in 2016, leading the Democratic establishment to treat it as hopeless in presidential contests. Groups such as the Latino-oriented Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), however, mobilized working-class families in Maricopa, where the population is now almost one-third Hispanic, through an agenda of economic and racial justice. Biden narrowly won the suburban county.
Although Democratic gains in suburbia were important for winning the election, so was the Black vote. Particularly, the southern Black vote. Biden's win in South Carolina was crucial for getting...
Although Democratic gains in suburbia were important for winning the election, so was the Black vote. Particularly, the southern Black vote. Biden's win in South Carolina was crucial for getting the nomination. And now, Georgia voters are going to determine who controls the Senate.
It seems like Sanders never did much to win the Black vote?
One sentiment I’d heard (I think from one of the black subreddits) regarding Bernie is that “Yeah, he’d helped with the Civil Rights Movement, but then he moved to one of the whitest states in the...
One sentiment I’d heard (I think from one of the black subreddits) regarding Bernie is that “Yeah, he’d helped with the Civil Rights Movement, but then he moved to one of the whitest states in the country and didn’t continue working with us.” Biden worked with Black leaders for a long time.
There’s also the fact that many Black Americans supported the 1994 crime bill, because violent crime was impacting their neighborhoods too (arguably more than majority white neighborhoods).
The 2020 election once again showed that the pursuit of affluent, white, college-educated suburbanites dominates the political strategies of both parties. Donald Trump made a transparently racist appeal to the so-called suburban housewives of America, warning that liberals were plotting to “abolish the suburbs” by flooding their neighborhoods with low-income housing and Black Lives Matter protests. And while Joe Biden acknowledged the increasing diversity of American suburbia, his campaign continued the decades-long centrist Democratic project of crafting electoral appeals and calibrating policy positions toward moderate, upper-income voters.
Suburbs today are more working-class, and more diverse, than ever before. But it is not clear that the Democratic Party establishment, including the incoming Biden administration, is ready or willing to embrace the suburban electorate on its own terms.
The Democratic Party’s suburban strategy of chasing affluent white-collar professionals, and simultaneously marginalizing its traditional working-class base, has deep roots in the racial upheavals and economic crises of the 1960s and 1970s. During the intraparty warfare of the 1980s, a faction of professional-class politicians labeled the “Atari Democrats” argued that embracing high-tech corporations and suburban knowledge workers represented the best path forward to a prosperous future and an electoral realignment.
It was a direct repudiation of the multiracial, working-class “Rainbow Coalition” strategy of Jesse Jackson in his 1984 and 1988 presidential bids, which sought to mobilize the “desperate, the damned, the disinherited, and the despised.”
At the same time, there is ample evidence that the Democratic Party’s prioritization of affluent white suburbanites actively undercuts a progressive policy agenda. [...] Despite the conventional wisdom about hyper-partisan polarization, many affluent white suburbanites are still inclined to split their tickets and vote for Republicans in down-ballot elections. This is true even in very “blue” states such as Massachusetts, Maryland, and Vermont, where a significant subset of white college-educated voters who are reliably Democratic in presidential contests prefer moderate Republican governors that support fiscal conservatism and cultural tolerance.
I feel like the article presumes a truth that is not really obvious to be a truth. Namely the "if you build, they will come" idea around
Will they? While that makes logical sense if you were looking down from above, it really has not played out in reality. Sanders tried, twice, and even among the demographics of working class Democrats he lost in both primaries. In fact, much of his voters came from affluent Suburbanites!
Brexit, for instance, was also overwhelmingly voted for by the areas that would be the most disproportionately hurt by the policy, and also disproportionately low income. It's not a US party dynamic specifically.
This also implies that the electorate has a much greater focus on economic policy than I think can be assumed either. Identity politics is a big part, and that's another thing the article seems pretty vague on. I'm not sure who the working class people being aliened are. If it's the new, diverse suburbia - I mean, look at the numbers, while it was notable Trump gained in Black votes, it's only interesting in an academic sense, it was still overwhelmingly democratic. Asians - looks likes it's all blue to me. Hispanics is the demographic that Democratics lost the most ground in, but I think just an economic policy that favors wealthy urbanites is too simplistic an answer to that, not to mention that part of the economic policy that turned hispanics in, say, the Rio Grande valley away was the COVID lockdowns.
If it's much of rural America, I am doubtful that economic policy is going to be a bigger motivator than identity politics, and Republicans have the white, conservative identity on lockdown - not to mention that it's not exactly an identity I think you should try and have as a party ethically.
Like, fundamentally, if a voter's biggest wants were a
Is it not obvious which party, while flawed in execution, is closer to that!? If a voter looked at the Democrat's presidential platform, and looked at Trump, and the GOP's "platform", and then decided to either not vote or vote for Trump, then I am doubtful how much that is truly their main priority!
One other point is that the suburbs aren’t a bastion of whiteness anymore. Plenty of suburbs are themselves diverse, and while the Dems are moving away from pandering to white suburbanites, they are still engaging with suburbanites as a whole.
The article makes a pretty clear case that the Democratic Party is failing many Americans by prioritizing the interests of suburbanites but I would have liked to hear a bit more discussion about the demographic constraints on that decision. Are there enough votes to support a more progressive Democratic Party or is their emollient behavior a necessary evil to gain power? (If there wasn’t another way to get Trump out of office, I’m more likely to be forgiving, in this instance.)
Part of this is a chicken or the egg issue. People who aren't represented by either party are less likely to vote, so their votes aren't there to be attractive to either party, which means no party will move to represent them... So at any given time you can argue that the parties should both focus on the people who already do vote since that's the path to immediate victory, but it doesn't lead to widespread enfranchisement.
The article points to progressive activists' mobilizing efforts that people like Stacy Abrams have carried out:
Although Democratic gains in suburbia were important for winning the election, so was the Black vote. Particularly, the southern Black vote. Biden's win in South Carolina was crucial for getting the nomination. And now, Georgia voters are going to determine who controls the Senate.
It seems like Sanders never did much to win the Black vote?
One sentiment I’d heard (I think from one of the black subreddits) regarding Bernie is that “Yeah, he’d helped with the Civil Rights Movement, but then he moved to one of the whitest states in the country and didn’t continue working with us.” Biden worked with Black leaders for a long time.
There’s also the fact that many Black Americans supported the 1994 crime bill, because violent crime was impacting their neighborhoods too (arguably more than majority white neighborhoods).